O/T Other than cameras...

Byuphoto

Byuphoto

Would like to upgrade
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Jun 11, 2005
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what is the coolest thing you have ever fixed, restored or rewoked.
I am presently in the process of restoring/rebuilding a 1973,last production year, Harley-Davidson Servi-car. For you that don't know it is a 45 C.I. flathead powered, three wheeeled, delivery trike. I found the motor, transmission,frame and rearend in a junkpile. I have since bought a front end and have the gas tanks, rear box bed and fenders at the painters. My nephew owns a harley repair shop and he helps me buy or scrounge the parts. It should be finished by next spring.
 
That sounds like a fun project! In about 74 bought a 65 Corvair Corsa Turbo for $50 that was running (barely) and then stripped it down to component parts and restored it. Even at that time some parts were getting difficult to find, so I had a little route of Chev parts counters in the Seattle area... It turned out very well, and won a couple of trophies in concours events. Fun to drive too!
 
Well, I'd love to be able to work on old cars (some favorites of mine are the Volvo Amzon 121/122, the Alfa Romeo GT Junior and the Fiat/Pininfarina Spider), but neither have the money, nor the time and work-space for that.
So I'm stuck with constantly servicing my 12-speed bike I got for confirmation in 1985, and still use as my main means of transportation in summer.

Roman
 
Doug said:
That sounds like a fun project! In about 74 bought a 65 Corvair Corsa Turbo for $50 that was running (barely) and then stripped it down to component parts and restored it.
Click to expand...
Is it "unsafe at any speed?" 😛 I drive a Suzuki Sidekick (now almost extinct), which is supposed to turn over if you breathe on it too hard. It was free. My wife won two (2) Sidekicks in a contest sponsored by a local Suzuki dealer.
 
The contax IIIa...

Ah other than cameras?
I have 'fixed' a 400.000 euro mode-locked Tsunami pulsed laser system. OK, was not really broken, just badly drifted out of alignment, took half a day to get the pump beam back into the cavity.
(The authorized technician was there too, working on another unit. I would not have done it otherwise!)

Privately, i have fixed many bikes, fuses, door locks, and all kind of little things that occasionally break in and around a house. No big stuff, really.
 
I'm in the process of lightly restoring a circa-1985 Bridgestone 450 road racing bicycle. I bought it from a woman on Cape Cod for $40 (!) and it's a very nice riding bike with a traditional lugged steel frame. When I bought the bike it wore its original 20 year-old tires...and they were still holding air!

A few years ago some friends helped me re-work an unused bicycle frame into a single-speed cyclocross bike. We used old and new parts for the assembly. It's pretty cool...I get positive comments whenever I ride it.
 
I used to dream of restoring / 'warm rodding' a Karman Ghia, not anything too far out, no billet, no fuzzy dice - just nice enough to look like a new car, I think 1850 is the biggest engine you can use before messing with dual carbs. And then one day I realized - I dont fix stuff on my car when it BREAKS, there's no way I'm going to spend the next 2000 hours of my free time grinding and sanding and masking and painting. (But I have done and can do basic maintenance, up to and including cv joints.)

I did however build a tube amp from scratch in college, Made my own chassis from aluminum u channel and 1/8 sheet, and it actually sounded great. Little 18 watter that would really do Bad Company / Queen type tones with the right cabinet. I still have it, it still works, but I ripped the EQ section out after graduation immediately before I got a job, and it's sat on a shelf ever since. I pulled it out long enough to wire it up enough to work, sans tone controls.
 
Which reminds me... I have a 20+ yr old mountain bike that I have to drag out and put air in the tires. Yes, the tires are original as well. I've had the bike since high school.
 
I wish I were mechanically inclined, but so far the only thing I've "reconstituted" is my M3 body. I stripped off the old vulcanite and applied the new cover from Cameraleather, following Morgan Sparks's instructions. Even my wife said the camera looked pretty after the bit of a facelift... and that's why I kept it (I had purchased it initially with intent to sell).
 
Thanks, Peter. That's a 16 tooth BMX freewheel on the cyclocross bike. The hub will accept a fixed cog & lockring on the other side (I just haven't had the guts to try fixed gear riding yet). I set up that bike with a 32/16 for fire road & trail riding.

Maybe the New England-area RFFers should get together for a "Shifters & Shutters" bike tour/photo shoot in Boston this fall. That could be fun.
 
While in college I completely restored a '67 Toyota Landcruiser, '62 T-Bird, '68 BSA Spitfire, and an MGC-GT (like I didn't have enough to do back then 😀 -- a diversion from studying, I suppose).

Lately: had a 460 Ford printed and balanced with some performance goodies thrown on -- just the ticket for hauling horses (they seem to like the sound of the Flowmasters 😉).

Recently rescued my 18 year old Klein mountain bike from neglect and resurrected it as a "grocery-getter" replete with an over-sized milk crate.

Most recently: Remus exhaust and Jesse luggage on the R1100GS. It has also been outfitted with a Wudo 12 gallon aluminum fuel tank and other goodies for extended travel. There has been a marked trend towards me getting less personally involved in time-consuming projects -- I wish I had the time and skills that others do (like Henry Scherer with the Contaxes) 🙁.

P. S. I forgot that the Klein mountain bike originally was a fun project: I bought a bare frame from the factory, sent it to Cycle-Art in San Jose for paint. A local wheel builder laced the rims and every part/component was individually selected and I assembled it myself. Mountain bike technology at the time was moving about as fast as computer/chip technology so about a year after it was built it was seriously behind the curve with no suspension, etc. 😀 -- oh well, it was fun. I've enjoyed it so much around town this summer that it's going back to Cycle-Art this winter for new paint.
 
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